


As a Living Sacrifice

by yet_intrepid



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Christianity, Gen, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 13:18:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3979465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yours are the hands, the sisters told him. Yours are the hands of Christ. But now he feels the blood slick on his fingertips, and he wonders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As a Living Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of applying this quote to Matt comes from Hanna [fizzygingr](http://fizzygingr.tumblr.com/). I'm looking forward to seeing her take on it as well!

_Yours are the hands._

Matt hears the heartbeat change when the man beneath him goes out. His hands, coiled and aching, cease their work at last. With effort, he brings one of them down to the pavement and uses it to push himself upwards. Grit sinks into his palm like razor-edged teeth. Like nails.

It flashes on his senses then, the thought of crucifixion.

“Yours are the hands,” the sisters used to say. Quoting a saint, and Matt knows her name but he cannot focus enough now to bring it to the fore. Yours are the hands of Christ. He can use you for his work. And Matt used to remember the crucifix, the driven spikes, and think: is that what always happens to Jesus’ hands?

He is on his knees. His palms are raw and his knuckles bloodslick. There is an unconscious kidnapper on the ground before him, and it is his work. Oh God, there is blood on my hands—and my lips are unclean.

His hands are not like Christ’s. They are agents of destruction, deserving of their punishment.

Yet he cannot seem to stop.

_Yours are the feet._

Matt gets up. He finds a hiding place for the kidnapper, makes sure he’s out of the way. Then, profoundly weary, he fumbles for a nearby wall and leans against it.

He can still hear sirens. Still hear weeping, screaming, sighs.

And he thinks: all he wants is for this place to be safe. No more exploitation, no more corruption. Just peace. If Hell’s Kitchen were peaceful, he would have been a priest.

My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

“Yours are the feet,” the sisters had said, and didn’t Jesus’ feet carry him as he drove out the oppressive moneylenders from the temple? Didn’t he stand firm as he braided the whip?

Perhaps Matt’s feet, even when they falter, are pointing him in the right direction after all.

_Yours are the eyes._

As he drags himself homewards, he remembers. It’s Saint Therese, and the rest of the quote, well. It’d certainly explain some things about the state of Hell’s Kitchen. Because if his eyes are Christ’s, then God is blind.

If only, he thinks, he could see with Christ’s eyes instead of Christ seeing with his.

_You are his body._

He strips out of the gear and gets into his sweats. His bruises pulse and ache, but he can both glory in the pain and learn from it—as fellowship with those who fight the good fight, and as discipline for his violence and his perverse delight in the same.

“You are his body,” he thinks, as he lies down on the couch; he is too tired to get into bed after going to the kitchen and digging through the freezer for his misplaced icepack. So may your body be wounded, like his. Be exhausted, like his. Be sacrificed, like his.

And this he knows at least—he is a sacrifice. Perhaps in the wrong ways, perhaps even for the wrong reasons, but he is a sacrifice.

And he will not cease to offer himself up.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm Protestant, not Catholic, so any errors in the portrayal of Matt's faith are due to that. Also, please bear in mind that this is from Matt's point of view and thus is not necessarily meant to be a portrayal of my views on Catholicism.


End file.
